Saturday, January 19, 2013

By NEIL MCKEGANEY
Published on Wednesday 16 January 2013 00:00 in Scotsman.com

National policies need to be
about reducing the impact of illegal drugs on Scotland, not initiatives
that could result in their wider use, writes Neil McKeganey

IN MONDAY’S report from the Westminster’s
all-parliamentary group on drug policy reform, we have what has become
the latest in a long line of calls for the legalisation of illegal
drugs. For the advocates of drugs legalisation, the arguments seem
disarmingly familiar and persuasive: our drug laws have failed to stem
the flow of illegal drug use; many of those substances that are
currently illegal are less harmful than tobacco or alcohol and,
therefore, we should pursue an approach that legalises these and other
forms of drug use.

The trouble with this view is that it is
almost entirely based on the premise that drug use under a legalised or
regulated regime would not significantly increase. That is a bold
assumption and one for which there is little evidence. The supporters of
legalisation cite Portugal, where all drugs for personal use were
decriminalised in 2001. Troublingly, however, while some positive
benefit has flowed from that policy change, drug use among young people
in Portugal has increased rather than decreased and there remains a
stubborn black market in drug supply within the country. Drugs
decriminalisation does not appear to have been quite the rosy road of
unbroken success that many might have wished and others have promoted.

But
even if a plausible case can be made for the benefits of drugs
decriminalisation, the timing now for such a bold policy change in the
UK seems wrong. Most recent data from the UK is showing a marked
reduction in almost all forms of illegal drugs use, with the exception
of cocaine, which is rising.
We are recording lower levels of
cannabis use, heroin use, LSD use than for decades. In the face of such
reductions it would seem odd to implement a policy of decriminalisation
or legalisation that would hold out the very real prospect over time,
even if not immediately, of a marked increase in the levels of drugs
consumption.
Those who favour drugs legalisation or
decriminalisation often argue that a marked increase in drug use would
be unlikely because most people who wish to use illegal drugs can do so
already with minimum inconvenience. However, this is not to say that if
the current legal impediments to such drug use were to be removed that
there would be no increase in the number of people interested in at
least experimenting with drugs, confident in the knowledge that they
would be breaking no law in doing so. Would it matter if there were an
increase in the number of people experimenting in this way with various
substances?
The answer to that question really lies in the fact
that many of the controlled substances are proscribed precisely because
they are harmful (irrespective of whether they are more or less harmful
than the legal drugs) or because we suspect they may be harmful but do
not yet have the evidence to assess their precise level of harm, as is
the case with many of the “legal high” drugs.

Any population
level increase in the consumption of such drugs as LSD, heroin, or
amphetamines would unquestionably lead to an increase in the number of
individuals experiencing problems as a result of drug use. Some of those
individuals would become addicted to the substances that have a high
potential for addiction or become psychologically traumatised by those
drugs that we know can cause major mental health problems.

That
scenario would be less worrying if we had effective drug treatment
services able speedily to lift people out of the depths of their
addiction or psychological trauma. The reality is quite the reverse,
with drug treatment services struggling to support individuals in their
recovery and most people leaving drug treatment services in a continuing
state of drug dependency. Recovery from drug dependency is a long,
difficult and costly road that involves major heartache for the drug
user and his or her family.
It is a great shame that so many of
our influential leaders seem persuaded of the view that the best we can
do in tackling our drug problem is to reduce some of the legal barriers
to drug use. If we are to tackle our drug problem, we need effective
drugs prevention, effective drugs treatment, but we also need effective
drugs enforcement.

There is an analogy here that is rather
revealing. We have made major inroads in the UK in reducing the overall
level of smoking by a combination of public health education, social
sanction and the banning of smoking in enclosed public spaces. Nobody
should be under the illusion that the contribution of legislation in
banning smoking was anything other than key in reducing the prevalence
of smoking and reducing the overall level of tobacco-related harm.

It
is ironic that just as we have come to see the benefit of combining
education, treatment and legal sanction to reduce tobacco consumption,
some of our leading parliamentarians seem convinced of the benefits of
dismantling the legal barriers to wider drug use.
No country in
the world has boldly discarded drugs enforcement and the UK would be
unwise to go down such a road when we are beginning to see the success
of our current tripartite approach combining treatment, prevention and
drugs enforcement. We can do better in all of those spheres than at
present, but that does not mean we should look to the government to
become the major supplier or regulator of much wider forms of drugs
consumption.

The all-parliamentary group has come up with another
equally questionable proposal for dealing with the proliferation of so
called legal high drugs, namely to make the producers and suppliers of
those drugs subject to trading standards legislation within which they
become legally responsible for the quality and safety of the drugs they
supply.

I can see why the producers of those drugs might prefer
operating under such a system, but could we possibly accept their
assurances in terms of quality and safety, especially where those drugs
are being produced in laboratories in distant parts of the world?

What
would happen in all probability is that issues of safety would come a
long way second to issues of profit in the manufacture and sale of those
substances and we would see thousands of young people effectively being
used as guinea pigs, consuming substances that they believe are
relatively harmless and which we have legalised, but which in reality
neither we nor they actually know what chemicals were even in the drugs
they were consuming.

Drug use has taken a tremendous toll on
Scotland – and continues to do so. We have communities that have
effectively been taken over by the drugs economy.

Our aspirations
and policies need to be about reducing the extent and the impact of
illegal drugs on Scotland and not about pursuing initiatives that could
easily result in their wider use.
Just as we have led the way in
international efforts to reduce the availability and consumption of
alcohol and tobacco, we need to be no less bold in our efforts to reduce
the use and availability of all of the currently illegal drugs. Only
then will Scotland be lifted from the shadow of a drugs problem that is
substantially worse than virtually anywhere else in Europe.

• Neil McKeganey is director of the Centre for Drug Misuse Research in Glasgow

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Joanna Journet, Administrator of The Orchard Recovery Centre on Bowen Island, passed on this encouraging news yesterday. Three years ago, Holyrood, the Scottish Parliament, issued a similar and even stronger statement about a change in direction towards recovery.

From Methadone to Recovery

The British government plans to change
drug treatment in a drastic reorientation away from harm reduction. Drug
addicts will now receive help in overcoming addiction rather than
primarily seeking to reduce the harm caused by drug use which was the
main emphasis of the previous government’s policy.
In the future,
substitution treatment will play a "limited role" while fighting
addiction will become the overriding treatment objective.

James Brokenshire, the Drugs Minister tells Daily Telegraph
that "there should only be a limited role for methadone in treatment.
“[Methadone] should be seen as part of a pathway taking people to a
position where they are clear of addiction."

The policy change would reflect better what drug addicts
actually want. Research has shown that a large majority of drug users
want abstinence as a goal of their treatment (read more) Recovery, the overriding treatment objective

Brokenshire, the UK Drugs
Minister, stated that "we are looking to have greater emphasis on
recovery rather than simply on treatment itself. The aim is to get
people clear of addiction.”

Treatment services that are unable to
get people off the addiction could risk losing government funding. This
appears to be a reversal of the previous trend where recovery oriented
services lost government funding while funds were directed towards harm
reduction and substitution services instead.

Friday, January 11, 2013

The major media do not want to cover the issue of marijuana causing
mental illness. But because a prominent Democrat, Patrick Kennedy, has
raised it, the media have nowhere left to hide. The news that he says
marijuana “Destroys the brain and expedites psychosis” was big news and a big headline in The Washington Post.

Kennedy fought alcoholism and an addiction to prescription drugs and
is now taking on the marijuana lobby, while getting verbal abuse from
the potheads in return. The Marijuana Policy Project calls his new
group, SAM (Smart Approaches to Marijuana), the “new threat” and “a dangerous, new national anti-marijuana organization.”

The group’s website features such stories as:

Marijuana use linked with significant IQ loss

Medical marijuana laws hurt kids, doctor says

Legalize pot? No, reform laws

Kennedy, the younger son of Edward M. Kennedy and a former member of
Congress from Rhode Island, was strong and direct, telling the Post,
“Marijuana destroys the brain and expedites psychosis. It’s just overall
a very dangerous drug.”

The paper said Kennedy wants “to shift the debate from legalization
to prevention and treatment—despite what appears to be a growing social
acceptance of the drug.”

That “growing social acceptance” is being driven by the drug-friendly
media, the pro-drug entertainment industry, and a dope lobby led by the
Drug Policy Alliance that is mostly funded by billionaires such as
George Soros.

Kennedy’s involvement follows other experts who have been discussing marijuana’s threat. Mental health expert Clayton Cramer
tells Accuracy in Media, “The studies that have been done on the
subject clearly demonstrate not just a correlation between mental
illness and marijuana use, but a causal connection.”
However, the pro-marijuana movement is on the move, with the state of Oregon sinking so low as to authorize
the use of “medical marijuana” for a 7-year-old child with leukemia.
The child’s father, who is divorced from the girl’s mother, reported the
marijuana use to child welfare officials and said that he found the
little girl “stoned out of her mind.”

The prospect of Patrick Kennedy’s involvement gives hope to those who believe the U.S. has been surrendering the war on drugs.

Reuters broke the story, “Patrick Kennedy On Marijuana: Former Rep. Leads Campaign Against Legal Pot,”
which was picked up by the Huffington Post and other liberal outlets.
Kennedy “is taking aim at what he sees as knee-jerk support for
marijuana legalization among his fellow liberals,” it said.
The dope lobby never expected a certified liberal—and the son of a liberal icon—to lead a new charge against them.

SAM is a bipartisan group, chaired by Kennedy, which includes George
W. Bush’s former speechwriter and Daily Beast columnist David Frum,
Harvard Professor Sharon Levy, Kevin Sabet, and other public health professionals and lawmakers.

Levy authored a resolution for the American Academy of Pediatrics
opposing the use of “medical marijuana” in children, while Sabet served
in the Obama Administration as Senior Advisor at the White House Office
of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP). Sabet has debated Ethan Nadelmann of the Soros-funded Drug Policy Alliance.

On its website, Frum argues
against marijuana legalization. Equally significant, SAM talks about
where marijuana legalization is heading—a takeover by the tobacco
industry, which has openly speculated about marijuana becoming an
“alternative product line.”

SAM declares, “We know if it’s legalized, marijuana will be
commercialized, too. A commercial marijuana industry will act just as
the tobacco industry acts. Big Tobacco may even take over a marijuana
industry once it’s up and running.”

Since tobacco companies lied to America for more than a century about
the dangers of smoking, SAM suggests the truth about marijuana will
also be concealed by the commercial and other special interests eager to
make money from the product.

In fact, left-wing British journalist Patrick Cockburn has already written
about a “tobacco moment” for marijuana consisting of the connection
between marijuana use and psychotic episodes that is comparable to the
scientific recognition that tobacco smoking causes lung cancer and other
illnesses. Cockburn wrote a series of blockbuster articles in the
British media on how his own son went insane smoking marijuana.

Clayton Cramer, author of My Brother Ron: A Personal and Social History of the Deinstitutionalization of the Mentally Ill,
says that the damage is being done through “the active promotion of
marijuana use, especially among young people, who are the greatest risk
of marijuana inducing schizophrenia.”

In addition to mental illness, a recent international study
found a link between “persistent cannabis use and neuropsychological
decline.” In other words, marijuana causes damage to intelligence,
memory and attention.

Monday, January 7, 2013

Candace Plattor is a colleague and a friend of the Drug Prevention Network of Canada. Candace dived in with great enthusiasm to the RECOVERY DAY 2012 celebration, joyfully volunteering her time, energy and knowledge.

The following is a link to an upcoming one-day workshop called "Loving an Addict, Loving Yourself: Counseling the Loved Ones of Addicts", which will be presented by addiction specialist Candace Plattor, MA, RCC, on February 2nd.

Candace is the author of the award-winning books Loving an Addict, Loving Yourself: The Top 10 Survival Tips for Loving Someone with an Addiction and Loving an Addict, Loving Yourself: The Workbook.

Are you:
A Therapist in Private Practice?
A Counsellor working with Addictions or Relationships?
A Psychology Student interested in working in the field of Addictions or Relationships?

Do you feel uncertain as to how you can help when your client discloses that their loved one is struggling with an addiction?

Endorsement

"All treatment centres in B.C. should get involved and support the Drug Prevention Network. As one collective voice we need to send the message that treatment works and it saves lives. There are recovery houses, treatment centers, private, government funded, long term, short term, detox, therapeutic communities etc. Let's help support prevention and help educate the public."